Hyde Park’s new original play perfectly showcases writer rgatx.
– which is getting a captivating world premiere production at Hyde Park Theatre – voice, sense of place, and social relevance are profoundly front and center.
The play revolves around Lucas , who is a successful middle-aged structural engineer, and Emily , a conflicted and despondent 17-year-old. The two happen to meet on a bridge in Irving, Texas – their hometown – where Lucas has returned to receive an award for the bridge’s architectural design and reminisce about his youth in the undeveloped woods and surrounding suburban park. She is seeking solitude and desperately needed relief from the weight of the world hoisted on her young shoulders.
“[Raul] Garza gives his characters heightened speech – a voice that is smarter, more expressive, and more eloquent than normal discourse.” As the play progresses, it becomes clear that the bridge – an 8’ x 14’ hard wood and red metal structure created by Mark Pickell and dramatically lit by Shelby Gebhart, with nicely understated shadow images of foliage painted into the background by Lilly Percifield – serves a greater purpose than connecting the muddy banks of Running Bear Creek.
There’s poetry to go with the choreography. Garza gives his characters heightened speech – a voice that is smarter, more expressive, and more eloquent than normal discourse – through which to impart their astute and emotionally charged observations about life. The often-dense dialogue is softened by the occasional chirping of birds from the surrounding trees, courtesy of sound designer Robert S. Fisher.